


The Fine Print

by Sholio



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Feelings Realization, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Ritual Sex, references to past Stephen/Christine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:20:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22369354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Ritual sex? Must be Tuesday. (Or, the one where they start with ritual sex, then contract a bad case of feelings.)
Relationships: Stephen Strange/Wong
Comments: 28
Kudos: 100
Collections: MCU Space Ships 2019





	The Fine Print

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scioscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/gifts).



Stephen had been Master of the New York Sanctum for all of two weeks when Wong portaled abruptly into his kitchen with the announcement, "The wards on Dimension 492-B need to be renewed today. Sorry, just thought to remind you. I don't know if Daniel kept a calendar of these things."

Stephen started to bend down by habit, then remembered himself and, instead, magicked together the pieces of the shattered coffee cup he'd been holding when Wong had popped up abruptly between the kitchen island and the wine reserve. "No, he did not," he said, setting it on the countertop. "Is that the one you told me about the other day with the soul-eating giant squid things?"

"That's a lot of them, honestly."

Of course it was. Stephen sighed and willed his hand steady (it worked about as well as it ever did), then used a little magic instead of reaching out physically to float the coffeepot over to him. "So is this something _I_ do, something _you_ do, something we both do ..."

"It's something you do," Wong said. "You and your preferred sexual partner, that is."

The coffeepot wobbled in midair and fell into the sink.

"... excuse me, my preferred _what."_

* * *

So it turned out that sex, because it boosted a person's energies far beyond what they could achieve alone, was an integral component of a large number of important magic rituals. Otherwise, as Wong so helpfully explained, the forces involved would crush a human soul like a grape.

They could have mentioned this at Kamar-Taj.

"I'm just going to go out on a limb here and suggest that they probably did, and you were too busy trying to leapfrog straight to the shiny bits to pay attention to the detail bits along the way," Wong said.

"Shut up," Stephen said, because that sounded exactly like something he'd do, honestly. "This is ridiculous! Do I get a choice about this? Do I have options?"

"Sure you do," Wong said.

"Oh good, because I was really starting to think --"

"You can have sex with a person of your choice to shore up the wards in the next six hours, or you can fight the horde of eldritch monstrosities that will overrun the Eastern Seaboard a couple of hours after that."

"... can I have a little while to think about it?"

"Sure," Wong said. "Just make it less than six hours."

Stephen wondered what his odds were of finding someone to have sex with him in six hours. His success at finding someone to have sex with him in the previous six _years_ had consisted entirely of Christine, who might or might not be currently speaking to him, and even if she was, he suspected that "Hey, Christine, want to have casual sex to save the Earth?" was the sort of opening line that was unlikely to lead to her speaking to him a second time.

"Take all the time you need," Wong said.

"Shut up." Loopholes, he thought. There were always loopholes. Just because those monks in Kamar Taj never thought outside the box didn't mean he couldn't. "Does masturbation work?"

"Oh sure," Wong said.

" _Thank_ you, you could have led with that --"

"... if you don't mind having your heart, mind, and soul crushed, peeled, and swallowed like a small tropical fruit, followed by the Earth being overrun by eldritch entities from a dimension of terror. That we won't have a Sorcerer Supreme to deal with, due to the above-mentioned crushing and peeling thing."

"I am starting to think," Stephen said, "that you're enjoying this."

"Only a little," Wong said. His face was solemn, but his eyes were dancing. 

"Someone could have mentioned that this job comes with a few catches in the fine print!"

He realized it was a stupid thing to say as soon as the words left his mouth. Wong, of course, was not one to allow a comment like that to fall unnoticed into the world.

"Being a master of the mystic arts comes with a responsibility or two? Who would have thought --"

"Shut up."

"Five and a half hours," Wong said.

* * *

"So how did Drumm handle this kind of thing, anyway? Did I inherit a ... a ritual sex partner I should be contacting, along with all the rest of this?"

He was pacing around the kitchen while Wong sat at the kitchen island with a cup of tea. The angry pacing would have been more satisfyingly swishy with the Cloak, but he hadn't had the foresight to have been wearing it this morning, and summoning it now just seemed childish.

"He had a few people he worked with regularly," Wong said. He added sugar to his tea. "Most of us do."

"Worked with. You know, prior to today, I would have assumed that meant doing group spells and, uh, that sort of thing."

"It does mean that."

"By having sex with each other," Stephen said.

"You seem oddly hung up on that."

"What, that I'm going to have to regularly have sex with random strangers to save the planet? You don't think it's normal to be a little bit hung up on that?"

"Most people get used to it at the apprentice stage," Wong said. "If they know they're not going to like it, they either leave or find another path not requiring this particular sort of high-level magic."

Which came back around to this entire situation being his fault again, but he wasn't ready to stop blaming other people, thanks. "So you're telling me the entire monastery was having sex the whole time I was there?"

"Well, not _constantly,"_ Wong said with that irritating glint of humor at Stephen's expense back in his eyes.

"The point is, no one ever asked _me_ to have sex." He had walked right into that trap, he could see the jaws of the trap closing around him as soon as the words were out of his mouth, and sure enough --

"That's because no one liked you, Strange."

"Shut up." He thought for a minute, then: "Does it still work if you pay for it?"

"You're thinking about hiring prostitutes to perform sex rituals with you? Oh _Stephen."_

"I realize that it's ethically unsound and probably a bit pathetic," Stephen said. "But would it _work._ I mean, a pentagram and candles are probably not the weirdest things a New York working girl is going to see on the job."

Wong stared at him for a long moment. "Oh," he said at last. "That was a serious question. Sorry, I was just -- No, look, you need someone with some level of training at channeling energy. And also someone who won't be alarmed when the weird stuff starts to happen. Panicking in the middle of ritual sex tends to result in a lot of screaming and eldritch monstrosities everywhere."

"Okay, fine, prostitutes are out." It was clear that Wong wanted him to ask about the "weird stuff," but he was equally determined not to. For one thing, he had a strong suspicion that this was one of those times when knowing the details wasn't going to help. "Can you just like ... give me a list or something?"

"A list of what?"

"People willing to have sex with me."

Wong gave him another long look, and then ostentatiously checked his watch, which Stephen had seen him do before, but it was still slightly disconcerting. It was a pocket watch, in the sense that it lived in a pocket dimension. Wong pulled it out, looked at it, and slipped it back in.

Stephen had a constantly running and very accurate clock in his head, ever since Kamar-Taj, which made him suspect that other sorcerers probably did too. He had a theory that Wong only did it to show off, and in this case, to demonstrate that time was ticking.

"Look," Wong said, as apparently the entertainment value from watching him panic began to wear off. "You're making this out to be a much bigger deal than it is. It's _work,_ Strange. It's no different from going to another dimension to fight a many-eyed chaos demon. In the one case, you grab your cloak and spell components; in the other, you take off your clothes. And then you do what needs doing, and put your clothes back on. It's the job. Sometimes it's messy, sometimes unpleasant, sometimes you almost get your head ripped off --"

"Not during sex, I hope."

Wong ignored that. "-- but you signed up for this, and honestly, you're used to having your hands in people's insides. Is this really that different?"

"Are you trying to convince me that _sex_ is no different from _brain surgery?_ Yes! Yes, they're different!"

"Listen, Strange," Wong said, a hint of irritation starting to curl around the edges of his tone. "I have my own duties too, you know. As entertaining as all of this admittedly is, I didn't plan on spending the entire morning here listening to you complain."

"Why can't you just do it yourself, then, if it's that easy?" Stephen snapped.

"Frankly it would be simpler than trying to talk you through it, but I _can't_. It's your demesne and it has to be you."

"Or me _and_ you," Stephen said quickly, seizing on what was starting to look like his only option short of portaling into Kamar-Taj and begging random people for sex.

Wong nearly dropped his teacup.

"It's the most obvious solution, right?" Stephen forged on through, now that Wong was staring at him. "You're here, I'm here, and _you_ do this kind of thing all the time, so I realize I'm the one on the bottom of every mage's dance card in Kamar-Taj, and thank you so much for pointing that out, but if you can just _suck it up_ and have ten minutes of unsatisfying sex to save the world --"

"Okay," Wong said. He set the teacup on the counter and spun his hand in the air, opening a portal to what looked like a dungeon with some kind of complex sigil inscribed in the floor. "You'll also need chalk, red and black candles, and a pair of silver candlesticks -- are you coming?"

"Er," Stephen said. "That's a ... yes, then?"

Wong sighed and stepped through the portal. Stephen hesitated, considered summoning the Cloak, then decided this would be awkward enough without having to deal with a witness on top of everything else. (Albeit a witness that was a garment and had seen him naked on multiple occasions, and also didn't have eyes. But still. It was the principle of the thing.)

He followed.

It was sharply chilly on the other side of the portal. Now that he was standing in it, he recognized the place as one of the ritual rooms underneath the Sanctum. Wong had already conjured up some white and red chalk, and was busy drawing occult symbols on the floor. It occurred to Stephen that he should probably be watching -- the advantage to a photographic memory was that he could copy the entire thing at will if he needed to -- but he was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that he was going to have sex in a few minutes. With Wong.

Wong looked up and said mildly, "You're going to want to take your clothes off."

"Uh, right." Stephen began to fumble with his shirt, and then hesitated. He hadn't actually been naked in front of anyone in years, aside from nurses during his accident recovery. In fact ... technically, he hadn't actually been with anyone since the accident. Not that it mattered all that much, it wasn't like he had particular hangups about scars, but, well, he _did_ have scars he hadn't had before, rather a lot of them, and --

"Please tell me I'm not going to have to explain sex to you," Wong said, distributing candles around the edges of the circle of symbols he'd drawn around the sigil on the floor. "Removing your clothes is usually necessary. Even with magic involved."

"I _have_ had sex before," Stephen said shortly. He was now doubly glad the Cloak was still upstairs; he could only imagine the levels of sartorial floating smugness he would be subjected to.

He resumed unbuttoning his shirt, then stopped again, trying to silence the part of his brain that was currently trying out different variants on the phrase _Sex with Wong. Sex with Wong? Sex!! With Wong! Sex ... with Wong?!!_ "So how much actual sex do you need for it to count as sex?" he asked, trying to drown out the internal babble. "I mean, does it have to be -- er, penetrative? Or do you just have to get off? Does mutual masturbation count? Does it matter which orifi--"

"You really _weren't_ paying attention, were you," Wong said, lighting the candles with a wave of his hand.

"I think we established that," Stephen said, studying the sigil, and the rock it was carved into, and considering how comfortable it did _not_ look for having sex. _(With Wong.)_

Wong heaved another sigh and sat back on his heels. "The orgasm is what actually does it. Energy in the body surges at the point of orgasm -- as well as the moment of death, which is why sacrifices are common in dark magic, in case you missed that part too."

Stephen was not going to admit that he had, in fact, missed that part too. "So why doesn't masturbation work?"

"Because you have to spread the load over two or more people," Wong said, and Stephen filed away the also somewhat worrying _or more_ part for later. "One person simply can't do it. That's why sex is required in the first place, because it lifts your energy far above where it would normally be, so it merely leaves you tired, rather than a brain-dead husk."

"Wait, does this mean we both need to have orgasms at the same time?" Because that was also something he had not, historically, been very good at.

Wong rolled his eyes toward the low stone ceiling and flicked a hand down his front. His clothes peeled off in a way Stephen would have found distractingly weird if his weird threshold hadn't been recalibrated so thoroughly by recent weeks' events.

Wong, naked, was distracting enough anyway. Up to this point, Stephen had been carried along by the knowledge that he was simply going to have to do this ( _lie back and think of the cosmos_ ) -- it didn't really matter if it was Wong, Christine, or some random Kamar-Taj sorcerer for all intents and purposes. But now, confronted with naked Wong, it suddenly _did_ matter.

It mattered because Wong was Wong, one of the only people who actually seemed to voluntarily want to spend time with Stephen, even if it was for work, and he very badly did not want to fuck up whatever semi-friendly-ish working relationship they'd managed to get to; and also because Wong was really fucking sexy, all sure confidence and graceful muscle rippling beneath a smooth layer of fat.

And it abruptly hit Stephen, deep in the hindbrain, that it had been a _really long time_ since he'd had sex. A shivering wave of desire ran through him, prickled his scalp and rippled down his back to settle at the base of his spine.

"Strange, I have had sex with eldritch monstrosities who undressed faster than this."

Annoyance, it turned out, was remarkably useful for overcoming stage fright.

* * *

And so, extremely awkward ritual sex was had.

"Have you ever had sex with a man before?"

"In college, a couple of times," Stephen said, opting not to mention that the only person he'd had sex with regularly since then was Christine. It seemed irrelevant and also kind of sad, in retrospect.

"Did you ever have sex with one twice?"

"Look, if you think I'm awful at this, just say so."

"You're awful at this."

"Thanks, nice ego boost, really helping with performance here."

"Strange. Relax, get off, and we can both go have a nice cup of tea and some lunch."

It was probably not the most unsatisfying sex he'd ever had, because there had been, well, grad school, and also that party in his teenage years with the jello shots. But it was definitely up there. He was absently thinking about his shopping list when he actually hit orgasm and ... oh, okay, _that's_ what Wong meant by weird stuff.

It was an orgasm with the energy of the world running through it. Stephen felt himself alight, inside and out, and for one blazing instant, connected to all of creation. Even Wong. _Especially_ Wong. He was, in that moment, sharing Wong's pleasure as well, their shared orgasm rippling back and forth between them -- and he saw, he _saw_ why it took more than one person, and he saw more than that -- it seemed as if the underlying structure of the cosmos was opening up to him, a single glorious flash of all the multiverse had to offer --

And then that was gone, and he was back in his body, in a sticky tangle on a cold stone floor with Wong. He was too blissed out to care about the discomfort. The usual post-orgasmic sense of relaxation was, for the moment, heightened in the same way the orgasm had been. He felt an overwhelming sense of affection for everything and everyone in the universe, and was too relaxed to even find that weird. He was vaguely aware that Wong was absently stroking his hair; aware, too, that he'd cupped his shaking fingers around the back of Wong's head, the close-shaved hair prickling his palm with soft skin underneath.

Then he recovered from the bliss-coma enough to regain some sense of himself, and sat up abruptly.

"You'll get a hangover if you try to do anything immediately," Wong said sleepily, from the floor. "It helps with energy recovery if you take the time to ... I don't know why I bother, honestly," he went on in a more collected and annoyed tone, as Stephen stood up, wobbled, and started looking for his pants before remembering he could magic them over to him.

At least magic made cleaning up a breeze.

"And that's, uh, it?" Stephen said, putting his pants back on while Wong sat up reluctantly. He found himself having a certain amount of trouble looking Wong in the eye. "When do we have to do this again?"

"The renewal of this particular ward lasts for ten years."

"Oh thank God."

"But the seal on the undersea chasm off the coast of Long Island will need to be renewed next week."

"... Eldritch monstrosities again?" 

"Sea monsters, actually, but it's really academic when skyscraper-sized tentacles begin dragging your city into the sea."

"Excellent," Stephen said wearily. "Next time perhaps we could consider bringing a blanket."

* * *

And so, it became a thing. Not all the time, but at least once or twice a month, and frequently more. Too bad it was so unpredictable or he could have added it to his calendar. Tuesday, lunch with Christine; Wednesday, physical therapy (he was not about to admit to anyone that he was actually going to physical therapy again, but it did help with the stiffness and range of motion in his fingers); Thursday, sex with Wong. 

With practice came familiarity; with familiarity, routine. He began to get a better feel for how the entire process worked, in particular (as Wong had said) that it helped with recovery and reduced the aching-lack-of-energy feeling to lie there for a while afterwards and ... he _refused_ to think of it as cuddling, but that was basically what it was.

They also began to learn the intimacies of each other's bodies -- what was pleasing, where to touch, _how_ to touch -- and Stephen found that the better the sex was, the more intense the high and (he could only assume) the more energy was released. That post-coital state of magic relaxation seemed to follow him around throughout the day, a lingering sense of warmth and complacency. He found himself caring less about things that would otherwise have annoyed him, as if somehow it had blunted the sharpest edge of his perpetual tension.

After the first couple of times, he asked Wong if there was any mystical reason why they couldn't magic up a goddamn blanket, and Wong laughed and did so. That helped a lot with the comfort of afterglow cudd-- er, recharging.

The Cloak had, once or twice, made moves to suggest it might enjoy helping out in the blankets-and-padding area, but Stephen flatly refused. He didn't want to find out what _else_ it might have in mind, and he drew the line at ménage à Cloak.

He had gotten so used to the sessions with Wong that it was more than slightly disconcerting when he deciphered enough of Drumm's notes to realize there was a very important moon-related ceremony coming up (who knew that spells kept the moon from crashing into the Earth; Stephen really wished he didn't) and Wong wasn't available, being tied up in Hong Kong. By now Stephen had grown resigned enough to the sex-ritual aspects of his job that he was only vaguely embarrassed about portaling to Kamar-Taj and hunting down someone who wasn't doing anything and might want to fuck him to prevent the moon from crashing into the Pacific Ocean.

He ended up paired with a woman a little older than himself named Yuen Yi, who shrugged and said she wasn't busy and wouldn't mind. She had a lean, toned body and strong shoulders, and they had brief, unsatisfying sex that culminated in a vaguely unsatisfying orgasm that left Stephen ... well, okay, relaxed a little bit, because it _was_ sex, but certainly not blissed out in the same way as usual. Yuen Yi didn't seem to think anything was wrong, and Stephen wasn't quite sure how to bring it up ("So, that sex we just had, was it as unsatisfying for you as it was for me?"). Nothing seemed to be wrong with the ritual; the moon was still in the sky where it belonged, nothing eldritch had showed up, etc. (His fucking life. Honestly.) He just decided to ask Wong about it the next time he saw him.

"Ah," Wong said. "Yes. That."

They were in the rooftop garden of the Hong Kong Sanctum, and Wong was visibly tired and drawn, sipping a cup of the coffee Stephen had brought up for both of them. There were times when tea really didn't cut it.

All around them, the city's magic was slowly recovering from the damage wrought on it by Kaecilius, Dormammu, and (Stephen was willing to admit, now that he was working on being the bigger person about things like this) his own use of the Eye of Agamotto. Stephen couldn't quite see it, but he could feel it -- with his entire body, which made him think somewhat absurdly of a documentary he'd once watched on sharks, the way they could feel tiny vibrations in the water with their skin.

The city was sick -- not on the surface level, but beneath it (or above, below, however you wanted to conceptualize it), because of what had happened here. Wong had been working hard on repairing it, and Stephen found himself feeling prickly, in some inexplicable way, that Wong kept showing up to help Stephen with his own rituals, but hadn't asked Stephen to come here and help with work that was clearly exhausting him.

"So what's the deal, then?" This entire line of thought made him prickly. "She's just terrible in bed? You're magically enhancing my performance? -- why are you laughing?"

Wong was, indeed, laughing quietly. He shook his head. "Stephen, trust you to jump to the worst possible conclusions in all cases. We're compatible, that's all. Some people are. It's one reason why most of us have preferred working partners."

"Who are yours?" Stephen asked. He had never thought to ask earlier; it hadn't even crossed his mind.

Wong sobered. "Daniel and the Ancient One," he said, his voice low.

"Oh," was all Stephen could say. _I didn't know_ ... was pointless; obviously he didn't. And the subtext was too obvious anyway: _I didn't care enough to ask._

"In any case," Wong said, looking away from him, "I didn't expect we would be, at least not to that extent, but as you found out with Yuen Yi, you don't _have_ to be. It works regardless. It just works better if your specific energy meshes with your partner's."

"Since you haven't been calling me over to the Hong Kong Sanctum every time a ward goes on the blink, I'm going to assume you've been having sex with a variety of ..." Stephen hesitated; there was nothing he could think of to say at the moment that wouldn't sound petty or jealous, which was ridiculous. He wasn't even actually _that_ jealous, except it was ridiculous to be jealous at all, especially when he'd literally just come to Hong Kong after banging somebody else.

"... Ritual partners, yes." Wong quirked a slight sideways smile, still tinged with wistful grief. "There are others among the Kamar-Taj disciples and graduates that I'm compatible with, if not to the extent that I was with them, or you."

"Why didn't you ask me, then?" It burst out of him with mingled pain and relief, like lancing an infected wound, and it was only after the words were out that he understood that was really the basis of everything that had been bothering him.

"Because I ..." Wong seemed on the verge of saying something else; then he looked squarely at Stephen. "You're busy at the New York Sanctum, and honestly, I didn't think you'd come."

It would be easier to defend himself if he didn't suspect Wong was right.

Or at least ... had been right.

They sat on the rooftop, looking out at the glittering lights of the city, and the awkwardness faded slowly, leaving a quiet, companionable calm. Actually, more than that: Stephen had the wild, ridiculous urge to kiss him.

 _Someday,_ he thought, _it might be nice to have sex without the fate of the world at stake._

"You feel it, don't you?" Wong said, and Stephen jerked and mentally floundered and then realized Wong was looking at the city lights, not at him, and was talking about -- well, he had no idea what Wong was talking about, but probably not what Stephen was thinking about.

"Yes?" Stephen said. "No. What are we talking about?"

"The way it's off balance here."

"Oh, that. Yes." Stephen reached out again, in the way that he was starting to get a sense for, feeling around the edges of the warps and strains in the magical fabric of the world around them. "This is because of what I did with the Eye, isn't it?"

"Some of it," Wong said. "I do appreciate not being dead, though."

 _I do also appreciate you not being dead_ \-- was a little too banal, or perhaps obvious. Stephen looked away, out at the neon city. "I didn't realize it was this bad."

"Well, it's not _all_ you. The London Sanctum is in even worse shape."

And all of this had been going on around him while Stephen was struggling to figure out the layout of Drumm's admittedly confusing house and trying to teach himself cuneiform so he could read the oldest books in Drumm's library. 

"You've been putting it back together?" he asked. Another banal question.

"Essentially," Wong said. "Not _just_ me, obviously." He reached out a hand, smoothing his fingertips down what Stephen's not-quite-second-sight told him was a particularly strong ley line with an uneasy wobble to it, smoothing away the counter-vibration and leaving taut stillness in its wake. Stephen couldn't help the way his gaze was drawn to Wong's fingers, the strength and sureness of those capable, graceful hands. Could feel the ghost of those hands on his skin, pressed to the small of his back, curled around Stephen's trembling, scarred fingers --

Wong dropped his hand away from the ley line with a final twist of his fingers, and Stephen thought that at least if any staring might be noticed, it just looked like he was watching to learn how to do it.

"You didn't ask me to help," he said again, and then added, "Because you didn't think I would. Yes. I get that, but --"

"And more than that, because you're still climbing up a very steep learning curve," Wong pointed out. "Most of us had years, decades even, to adjust. You dived right in at the deep end, admittedly by choice rather than necessity --"

"I _literally saved the world."_

"So did I, earlier this morning," Wong said. "Big deal."

Stephen rolled his eyes, and Wong brushed a hand over the rim of Stephen's cup, refilling it with fresh hot coffee before refreshing his own.

"Ask me next time, dammit."

The halfway smile quirked again. "All right, I will."

* * *

So Stephen went to the Hong Kong Sanctum when needed, and the two of them settled into what Stephen thought of as a mutually beneficial working relationship. He didn't ask if Wong was having sex with other people, mostly because he knew what the answer was, and there were a few times for him too -- mostly Yuen Yi, but occasionally other people, whoever was handy. He was starting to see what Wong was talking about. Once you'd done this enough, it got to be just another day at the office. Morning calendar: coffee and toast, water the plants, fuck somebody on the occult circle underneath the living room, refresh the summoning circle in the east wing, organize the library ...

But it _wasn't_ just another day at the office, those times with Wong, and he couldn't really figure out how that worked, or how it had happened. But he _liked_ it, not just the sex but also (perhaps even more) the lazy recovery times, lying in a tangle of blankets in the middle of a circle of candles or incense burners or tubs of cattle grease or whatever bizarre thing the ritual had called for, with his head pillowed on Wong's shoulder and his arm across Wong's stomach. They lay in sated silence sometimes, and sometimes they talked -- not about anything in particular, the exact sort of conversations they would have had over coffee or tea in the Sanctum's kitchen, but with a softer edge, with the entire world blurred in gentle post-orgasmic satisfaction, and Wong's hand brushing lightly up and down his rib cage.

It made him think of waking up next to someone, which was something he really missed, and hadn't realized he missed, about those times when things were good with Christine. They hadn't had very many lazy weekend mornings; she was usually on call or pulling double shifts on a residency, he always got up early anyway ...

But the feeling of rolling over and having someone in the bed with him, a warm naked body to reach out and touch ...

... _wasn't_ how things were with Wong, damn it. This was sex for a reason, and eventually it had to end, every time; they sat up and put their clothes back on and got back to work.

He thought, sometimes, of waking up in the same bed. Of being _in_ a bed, and not on a hard stone floor or the altar which Stephen _still_ couldn't believe they hadn't rolled off of; he was going to put a safety railing around that thing one of these days. It might be kind of fun to reacquaint himself with his dim memories of what sex was like in a bed, with actual sheets, and an adjacent shower.

Anyway, those were passing thoughts, and his mind was entirely occupied with ancient Sumerian demonology when Wong portaled into the Sanctum library much too early in the morning, looking slightly wild-eyed. Stephen started out of a chair, fumbling the tome of Sumerian lore he had been flipping through and insta-committing to memory. He still didn't know exactly how Wong managed to know exactly where he was at any given time to portal to; at some point he needed to ask about thaat.

"Get your ritual supplies and come with me _now,"_ Wong snapped.

There were times to argue about being ordered around and times not to. Stephen summoned the Cloak, checked his favorite pocket dimension for a good supply of candles, and followed Wong through the portal.

They stepped out in a room he'd never been in before, though it had the same dungeon-y quality as a lot of the places where he'd been spending too much time lately. The floor was gently trembling, small pebbles fell from the ceiling, and he didn't even have to reach out to feel the chaotic energy in this room. It felt like it was ... _fibrillating_ was the word that came to mind, like a heart that had stopped beating and started fluttering uselessly.

"Where are we?" It was hard to stand; he found himself spreading his legs and balancing as if on the deck of a ship. It wasn't just the ground shaking, but also the way that reality itself seemed to be rippling around him. 

"Under the London Sanctum." Wong tossed a bag of ritual chalk and a small sack of copper dust to him. "We need to put a major binding on this. I'll handle the detail work. Give me a basic hermetic circle. Hurry."

It was a little depressing, really, or at least a sad statement on what his life had come to that he knew exactly what Wong meant and was already throwing out a handful of dust, sending it settling into complex patterns, before Wong had even finished speaking. "What's happening?"

"You know how we've been stabilizing the disturbances left over from Dormammu's incursion?" Wong crouched on the stone floor, busy with candles and incense where an elaborate sigil was inlaid in what looked like crushed gemstones. "Turns out that's not exactly what's been happening. Or, it _is_ , but it's also redistributing the stress throughout the global network of ley lines, and ..." He took a breath and drew a slim stone dagger from his belt. "It's been fraying, and I finally found the rip."

He pulled up his sleeve and slashed his forearm; blood flowed from the cut flesh, dripped off his fingers into the lines of the sigil on the floor. Stephen faltered in his circle preparation. Blood magic. He'd only rarely seen it done, even less often participated. It was incredibly powerful, and (as everyone had impressed on him, from the Kamar-Taj masters to the books he'd been reading) also incredibly dangerous.

But now that Wong had told him what was happening, he could feel it, something vaguely akin to the chaos he'd gone through getting to Dormammu's realm, but more primal.

"Are you saying we're standing on a rip in reality?"

"And every minute it widens is going to make it harder to repair." Wong looked up from his bloodwork on the sigil, his expression tight. "Come here."

Stephen knelt beside him. Wong passed him the bloodstained blade, then paused, his hand closing over Stephen's.

"I would have asked someone else if I could," he said quietly. "We are powerful together. Right now, we need that; it's the only chance for anyone to come out of this alive. But, Stephen --" He was rubbing the side of Stephen's hand with his thumb, his blood-sticky fingers curled around the knife and around Stephen's hand; he didn't seem to realize he was doing it. "There's a good chance one or both of us won't survive this."

"What happens if we don't do it?"

"Creation unravels around us."

"Right." Stephen pulled up his sleeve, baring the pale skin of his forearm. He smiled briefly. "I think if anyone's cutting on me, it had better be you. I'm not the scalpel type anymore."

Wong nodded. He gripped Stephen's arm -- his own was still bleeding sluggishly -- and made a swift, clean incision with the tip of the knife. It was neatly done, without hesitation. Wong would have made a good surgeon. Stephen watched, mesmerized, as his own blood flowed down his arm and into the sigil. It seeped into the glitter of agate and ruby and tiger's eye, spreading around the sigil, far more than the minimal amount of blood he'd lost should have been able to do.

And Stephen felt it take hold, a tug like a fishhook buried deep in his chest. He was bound to this now. And while he had known the theory all along, it was one thing to know it from a book, and another thing entirely to be confronted with the proof of concept of the way those other wards had been made, the ones he had been mindlessly and somewhat stickily renewing for months now. 

This time, they weren't merely shoring up the binding on a ward, binding, or spell laid down long ago. They were making their own.

Other sorcerers had bled and sometimes died to make those wards. An unbroken chain of them had worked and sweated and poured their own energy and bodily fluids into keeping them intact. He stood at the far end of that line, an heir to everything they were and had been --

"Stephen!" Wong's voice was sharp. 

Stephen looked up from the red tracery on his forearm, like coming back from a long distance away. He felt mildly intoxicated. Wong was still grasping his wrist. Stephen was intensely aware of him, of every stone and bit of gravel in the room. The instability around them was a dissonant note in the harmony thrumming between them.

"Blood magic is a lot the first time," Wong said. "Sorry this has to be your introduction to it. Ready?"

It wasn't until Wong started undoing his pants that Stephen remembered, oh right, it wasn't just blood that was required, but other fluids as well. Taking a cue from Wong, he undid his own pants clumsily with his hands, not using magic for it. He'd learned enough by now that he didn't need to be told not to use any unnecessary magic with the blood conduit thrumming between them -- connecting them to the stone beneath their feet, to each other, to the world.

The Cloak obligingly laid itself down on the bloodstained stone floor. "You'd better behave yourself," Stephen muttered at it, and to Wong: "Do I need to do anything I don't normally do?"

Wong shook his head. "I've already set down the guides. The most powerful rituals are also the simplest. It's not a matter of finesse, but of raw power."

"In other words, exactly what you keep telling me not to do," Stephen said. He started working on the bindings to his shirt, but Wong, who hadn't bothered to take off anything except his pants, laid him down on the Cloak.

"Even a stopped clock is right twice a day," Wong said with a grin that Stephen couldn't help finding charming, and locked his mouth over Stephen's.

* * *

Stephen had to say this for months of ritual sex: it had given him the ability to get off with minimal preparation under a wide variety of highly unsexy conditions.

What he hadn't realized until now was that the trick might not be learning to enjoy sex despite the discomfort and cold and danger -- but because of it.

They were half dressed and sticky with their own and each other's blood, fucking on a sentient piece of drapery with reality coming apart around them. Nothing about this should have been hot, well, aside from the heat of Wong's body as Stephen arched to meet him.

But it was.

Their teeth clashed so hard he tasted blood again, and didn't care. They rolled on the Cloak, writhing with the intensity of it. There was no time for anything fancier than jerking each other off between their tangled bare thighs, half handjob and half intercrural fucking. It was fast and sloppy and they were all over each other, hands and mouths and legs, Wong's weight on Stephen's chest and then rolling wildly over and feeling Wong's sturdy bulk under him --

His body was a livewire. It was too much and not enough. He couldn't think; all rational thought was washed away in a tide of _feeling_ \-- feeling Wong, feeling himself, feeling the energy web around them with all its frayed and curling edges. He was going to -- he was --

Light, and -- 

It was pleasure and pain rolled together; it was ecstasy so intense it became agony, searing like fire down his heightened nerve endings. It was an orgasm without end, and it was killing him, and he didn't even care.

\-- and then he was _out._ It was no gentle comedown, but a sudden, shocking cessation, as if he'd been kicked in the face: kicked out of that glorious all-consuming nothingness, leaving his body ringing like a bell. 

Rational thought began to trickle back. He was cold and sticky, lying on his back, tangled up with Wong's boneless limbs. He was shivering. The Cloak was patting his face.

Wong had ... kicked him out, somehow. Blocked a channel. He hadn't even known you could do that. 

Hadn't known --

"Wong," he breathed through numb lips.

He managed to sit up after a few attempts, with the room swaying around him. The effort dislodged Wong, who rolled off him, limp and cold to the touch. 

_"Wong!"_

Wong's lips were blue-gray. He didn't seem to be breathing.

Stephen was vaguely aware of the Cloak wrapping around him from behind, a feeling vaguely like a hug. He hardly registered it except in the same distant part of his brain that acknowledged he was shivering and sore and thirsty, and the cut on his arm stung like a bitch. All around them, the energy web hummed along, stable with only a few tiny plucked-string variations.

And Wong was --

"Not dead," Stephen muttered between his teeth. He felt for a pulse with aching, trembling hands, and couldn't find one, but that didn't mean anything; with low enough blood pressure, from blood loss or shock, the pulse could be undetectable to even a well-trained emergency crew. 

Magic, magic. He was a healer, he had performed miracles every day of his life, and now he had actual magic at his broken fingertips. The entire room was full of it. 

Stephen fumbled with the bloodstained stone dagger. The cut on his arm had already ceased to bleed, leaving his skin crusted with half-dried blood. He didn't know if there was a technique to it. But Wong had suggested that technique mattered less the farther up the power curve you went. It was raw energy that was needed here, and blood spells were the powerhouse of the magic world, second only to the Eye -- but that was locked away at the New York Sanctum, and anyway, turning back time wouldn't fix this; it would only leave them in the same race against time they'd been in before. Worse, actually, because looping time was what had damaged the world in the first place.

Blood it was, then. He slashed his arm below the first cut. Blood flowed hot against his cold skin.

It was energy that Wong needed, a sort of supernatural electric shock; Stephen tried to convince himself that that would be enough, that it was all that was wrong. Every cell in a living body burned with its own flame, and if you drew that down too far -- if you tapped out the very mitochondria in your cells --

It made no rational sense. But that was the world of insanity he lived in now. 

Blood ran down his arm and pooled in his hand, and with bloody, shaking fingers he painted symbols on Wong's chest, building the other end of a conduit to draw his own life down to replace what Wong had lost. He refused to think about how far tapped out he already was, how much more he could afford to lose, because it didn't matter. It didn't matter any more than it had mattered when he'd thrown himself into a dimensional vortex.

He saved lives. It was what he did. And maybe he'd had to go across the world and across dimensions and time to figure it out, but he _had_ , finally.

There was a tug on his wrist: the Cloak. He was so engrossed in his work, so acutely aware of the unseen clock ticking away the beats of Wong's life, that he ignored it. It tugged again, more insistently.

"Look, I _know,_ but I'm not going to stop," Stephen gritted out. "Either find a way to help or fuck off."

He could feel the power drain now, running with the blood down his arm into Wong's too-silent, too-still body.

Stephen had always thought of Wong as an island of serenity and calm, compared to his own restlessness. Only now he realized that Wong was never still, that there was always an intensity to him, a restless energy that matched Stephen's own. Seeing him without it was like a violation of the laws of nature. 

Which -- the irony was not lost on Stephen -- he was even now violating, trying to bring him back.

Magic couldn't restore the dead. But he refused to believe there was no way to restore the _body,_ especially when there was nothing wrong except severe energy drain.

"I don't lose patients," Stephen got out through clenched teeth. He was shivering from head to foot, his entire being, his entire _will_ pouring into that conduit. His eyes were wet; he didn't remember when that had happened. "I _don't._ You can call me an egotistical jackass, hell, you probably have, but I _do. Not. LOSE."_

It was anticlimactic, when it came. There was no sudden, movie-style gasping awake, no hero's kiss. Wong warmed to the touch beneath Stephen's desperate hands. He was breathing now, and Stephen didn't know when it had started, but it was happening: small, fragile breaths, the faintest lift and fall of the rib cage.

The Cloak tugged on his wrist again, insistently.

"Yes ... yes, I suppose ..."

He pulled his hands away, and covered his face with them for a moment, blood and all -- then put his hands down and got to work.

He had just enough energy left to open a portal back to the Sanctum. Rather than try to drag Wong through, or even stand up, he opened the portal beneath them and dropped them neatly through onto his bed. It was, if he did say so himself, very nicely done, especially in his present condition. He came in a bit high, but the Cloak caught them and lowered them gently.

"Go me," he muttered.

Passing out would feel really good right about now, but he couldn't, not yet. He worked on the rest of Wong's clothes, hands slipping, unable to spare even the amount of magic it would take to undo a button. _Fucking_ nerve damage -- he had to remind himself that he'd managed to dress and undress himself, brush his teeth and so on for the better part of a year before he had, eventually, ended up using magic to do most of what he used to do with fine motor control. Wong sometimes chided him gently about doing more things physically, not using magic so much ...

"It would be nice if you'd wake up and tell me that now. It'd be nice to say I told you so."

Wong didn't. But Stephen got Wong's clothes off, and his own clothes off, and reached to drag the blankets over them, but the Cloak got there first. It covered them up and then settled over the top, snugging down around them in a weighted-blanket kind of way that was (not that Stephen was going to admit it) very comforting.

"Wake me up if he stops breathing, all right?" he asked the Cloak. It patted his head with the edge of its collar, and then, only then, with Wong's breath soft in the crook of his neck and their bodies twined together, he let himself slip away.

* * *

Stephen woke after some twelve hours or so, itchy and ravenously hungry. Wong was still out cold, so deeply asleep he might as well be comatose, but his vitals seemed strong. The Cloak was still nestled over the top of them like a broody mother hen. It started to drift along when Stephen lurched out of bed and headed for the bathroom. "No, stay with him," he told it, and it briskly spun about and drifted back to the bed.

He probably shouldn't be as used to that thing as he was.

He took a very hot shower, downed a couple of cold glasses of water at the sink, and tested out his magic to dry off with. It responded sluggishly. He ached down to his bones.

He needed food, he was far too exhausted to get it the old-fashioned way, and he'd learned that you couldn't magic something up out of nothing. Well ... you _could,_ but it tended to be a pale substitute for the original. Food in particular, he had found out the hard way, was a bad idea. It was perfectly fine to use magic to cook from actual ingredients, or use a tiny sling-ring portal to obtain it from elsewhere, but you couldn't make so much as a sandwich out of pure magic, at least not a sandwich that would work like an actual sandwich.

He considered just making a hand-sized portal to his favorite bakery (he probably had enough magic for that), grabbing some croissants or something, and paying for it later. 

Oh right. Online orders were a thing.

So was delivery.

* * *

After two days, Wong was still sleeping deeply. By that point Stephen felt much closer to normal, though he was still taking it easy with his magic. It felt almost like having strained a muscle -- a metaphysical muscle -- and having to work around it until it healed up again.

He did portal over to the Hong Kong Sanctum to let them know what was going on, that Wong was fine but needed to recover for a little while. The magic here, he noticed, was calmer than he'd ever felt it, a placid pool without the ripples and eddies and undertows that had plagued it ever since Dormammu.

Apparently their binding was holding.

And Wong slept on.

Stephen brought books up to the bedroom, and cups of coffee, and occasionally spell components. There was nothing to do except watch Wong sleep, but his work could be done anywhere. At the moment his work mainly consisted of researching the effects of magical overuse and what could be done about it.

He even thought about asking somebody, but there wasn't really anybody _to_ ask. His main informants were Wong -- obviously not an option at the moment; the Ancient One -- dead; and Mordo, who currently hated him and was God only knew where anyway.

Or, well, Christine, but this was well and truly outside anything approaching her area of expertise. He would have liked to talk to her about it, though. He texted her a cancellation for their standing lunch date and an apology, and thought maybe, after this entire thing was settled one way or another -- after Wong _woke up_ , and things were more or less back to normal ... maybe he and Christine could talk about the entire Wong thing. It would be nice to tell someone. It occurred to him that she didn't even know about the ritual sex thing, let alone the Wong thing, so, all right, maybe he wasn't doing so well at the whole "telling people things" issue, and he was going to have to start there to explain about Wong, but, well ...

Maybe.

Christine was good at people. She might be able to tell him some of the things he was most likely doing wrong, and warn him about things he would almost certainly do wrong in the future.

He'd fucked things up with Christine, and with every other person he'd ever tried to have something approaching a relationship with. He really, really didn't want to fuck things up with Wong.

Not the least reason being that even if things completely went south with Wong, they probably were going to continue needing to have sex on a regular basis for the health of the magical ecosystem. It was really in his best interests to stay on good terms with his magical fuckbuddy. Or, er ... whatever Wong was to him now.

His own desperation, there on that bloodstained stone, came back to him sometimes. He remembered clawing at Wong's still form with his useless hands, ready to pour his entire _life_ into Wong's body if it could only bring him back.

Stephen brushed his thumb across the inside of his arm. The cut Wong had made was already healed, leaving no trace. Stephen's own counter-cut, on the other hand, had left a thin red line across the skin, puckering around the edges with scar tissue. Fine, so he still had a lot to learn about magic dagger technique. 

He didn't mind a scar there. It would be a useful reminder ... of a lot of things.

There was a sudden rustle from the Cloak, alerting him an instant before Wong stirred and rolled over.

Stephen had planned -- not that he'd thought about it -- to be sitting in this chair when Wong woke up, legs crossed, casually thumbing through a book. "Oh," he might say, looking up, "back, are we? Care to admit that you were an idiot the other day?"

... or words to that effect. He'd rehearsed a number of speeches, all of them generally focused on Wong's numerous shortcomings in the area of advance planning and failure to accomplish a ritual without almost dying. The words "self-sacrificing moron" might frequently be mentioned.

All of which went straight out of his head as soon as Wong actually moved. Stephen was hardly even aware of the transition; but somehow he was at the side of the bed, catching hold of Wong and pushing him back down onto the pillows as he tried to sit up. "Stay down, for God's sake. You've been asleep for two days, do you realize that?"

"I ..." Wong subsided, gazing up at the ceiling, and then slowly focused on Stephen. "I wasn't expecting to wake up at all."

"I _know,"_ Stephen snapped, and Wong, for some reason, smiled a little at this, and worked on pushing him off. Stephen moved back, just far enough to catch him if he fell over, keeping a point of contact on Wong's shoulder. The Cloak moved in discreetly on the other side, apparently for the same purpose. 

Wong glanced at it, and rubbed his forehead wearily. "I seem to be naked."

"You do remember what we were doing when you last had a conscious thought, don't you?"

"Yes, I remember." Ever so slightly testy. "Did it work?"

"It worked." Stephen had been monitoring it just to make sure. After all that, it had _better_ have worked. So far it was rock solid, not a single fluctuation. 

"Good." Wong blew out a breath. "And you?"

"Me what?"

"Are you all right?"

"Why wouldn't I be? Did I mention you almost died?"

Wong gave him a wry, exasperated look, and that was it, that was what did it, that look of patient exasperation and fondness. Stephen lunged in and kissed him.

It wasn't long and it wasn't much of a kiss. Wong's lips were dry and still had a metallic, bloody tang, and Stephen couldn't have cared less. Though he didn't really consider, until he broke the kiss, that he'd never actually done that outside of a ritual circle before.

"Ah," Wong said slowly. He raised his hand to touch his lips.

Stephen still had a hand on Wong's bare shoulder. Taking it away felt like an admission of something -- defeat, embarrassment, retreat; some emotion he refused to give in to. 

"What you did, back there," he said. "Don't do it again."

"I can't exactly promise that, Stephen. It's the job."

"I _meant_ kicking me out of the damn ritual. How did you do that, by the way? You'd always made me think that quitting halfway through would release eldritch hordes onto an unsuspecting planet."

Wong's startled look began to fade into a smile. "Well, at _your_ level, certainly."

Stephen laughed, and Wong looked startled all over again. "God, you're an asshole," Stephen said. He felt impossibly light, as if something warm and bubbly was fizzing in his chest. It wouldn't have surprised him to find out out he was actually floating. "I think I actually forgot how much of an asshole you are, for a little while there. You want something to eat?"

"I ... yes," Wong said, staring at him. "Food ... and also a shower, possibly not in that order."

"I ran a cleaning spell on you."

"It's no substitute for a shower. Trust me. By the way, are you on some kind of drugs?"

"I won't dignify that with a response," Stephen said, and portaled downstairs.

He came back a moment later with a bowl of soup -- he was not _about_ to admit that he'd ordered it that morning from Wong's favorite place up the street and had used some of his still-limited magic reserves to keep it hot and fresh. Stephen passed it to him with a crusty piece of bread; Wong took both, and said, "That close, was it?"

"I have no idea what you mean," Stephen said, and went to take the book back to the library. Some of the older books could get a bit ... bitey if they were kept out too long.

When he came back upstairs, Wong had cleaned the bowl down to the last scrapings and -- all talk of showers aside -- was drooping with exhaustion. Stephen was still dragging with weariness after two days, and Wong had to be worse. Wordlessly Stephen whisked the bowl downstairs with a handwave and then pulled back the covers on the other side of the bed.

"What are you doing now?"

"What's it look like?" Stephen magicked off his clothes; this barely got a raised eyebrow.

"Is some sealing spell about to unravel somewhere?" Wong asked.

"Do either of us have enough energy to put a seal on a Christmas card right now?" Stephen crawled onto the bed beside him, planted a hand on his chest, and pushed him down. "You're staying here 'til your personal aura stops looking like a guttering candle."

"Right," Wong muttered: giving in, just like that. He rolled over.

Stephen put an arm across Wong's ribs -- cautious, careful. He wasn't used to thinking of Wong as ... breakable.

"So we're doing this now, are we," Wong said sleepily.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Stephen wrapped himself against him, arm tucked over Wong's side, and rested his face in the back of Wong's neck. Just breathing him in.

"Uh-huh."

The Cloak settled over both of them, like a large friendly dog, and tucked itself down snugly on the corners. Warm. Cozy. Safe. The universe was probably going to try to unravel again tomorrow, but right now, there was this, and this was everything.


End file.
